Youngsters Get Look at an Ancient Whale

First-graders Robert Brown, Preston Mahler and Andrei Dambuleff circled the 100,000-pound whale fossil over and over, brushing their hands across its flaky surface and breaking off dusty chunks of debris stuck to the 9-foot-long bone.

“This is big,” said Robert, 5.

“Yeah, I know, it’s awesome,” agreed Preston, 5.

Students at Trabuco Elementary School gathered Tuesday to watch a crane lower the 5.5-million-year-old baleen whale head and other bones into the school’s own Jurassic Park--a sand-filled pit with assorted fossils, shark teeth and bones used by students learning about paleontology.

The whale bones were found three years ago by construction workers building a parking lot at St. Timothy’s Catholic Church in Laguna Niguel.

Paleontologist Marion Kearin of Saddleback College uncovered the large rib cage--measuring 28 feet long and 6.5 feet wide--and later the 9-foot skull.

The fossils were named “Tiny Tim” in honor of the church that donated the bones to the college. The college later donated some of the fossils to the elementary school’s Outdoor Education and Field Study Program.

Saddleback geology professor Peter Borella said the fossil is poorly preserved but will be useful to teach students about paleontology.

“We worked on it here for a while and everything was too broken up,” Borella said. “The value is in teaching people how to prepare it and piece things together, to see what whale skulls look like.”

Added Mary Cobb, director of the Trabuco field study program: “This is nice because so many times you go to a museum and can’t touch anything, but here kids can touch the fossil and take a piece home.”